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Happy Sunday!

Yet another week has passed in quarantine, and it looks like things are getting worse everyday. My cousin who lives in the US had severe symptoms of the virus, but luckily she tested negative. India took precautionary measures early on which was very tactical, but sadly US is suffering the consequences of a delayed response.

If somebody tells you that the night is the darkest just before the dawn, either they are trying to save you from the truth, or they are naive. Tough times are indeed ahead—in terms of both health and economy. Therefore being prepared and alert would definitely help.

Take care of your health. Take care of your family’s health. Don’t fire your employees, your cook, your maid, or your house help. They need you more than they ever did.

That said, now is the time for your weekly dose of multidisciplinary reading to upgrade your thinking and decision making. And if you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here.

The Inner Scorecard: How Good Do You Want To Be?

Human beings seek to satisfy a deep biological need by acting in such a way that they’ll feel praise and adulation—for their wealth, their success, their skills, or their looks. It could be anything.

The trait we are admired for matters less than the admiration itself. The admiration is the token we dance for.

Warren Buffet asks a rather important question in this regard, “Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover?”

💡 An Idea For You

Unlike pseudo-intellectuals who seek validation, fame and fortune, and “intervene” to help the society, but often end up harming it instead, it’s the humble man who actually helps the society by staying away, thereby inflicting no harm.

The humble man minds their own business, and limits their circle of competence to what is truly important. The humble man is not a bullshit vendor.

📑 I Enjoyed Reading

I’ve been very busy with work last few weeks, so didn’t have a lot of opportunity to read many articles, but yes, I did find a few good reads.

The Virus Shows That Making Our Companies Efficient Also Made Our Country Weak — “Efficiency is an unforgiving master. It crushes everything not in service of an immediate bottom line. But if there is a single economic policy lesson to learn from the coronavirus pandemic, it is that the United States’ obsession with efficiency over the past half-century has brutally undermined its capacity to deal with such a catastrophic event.”

Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? — I’m not the biggest fan of his books, but I do like Cal Newport’s blog posts. “Could the IndieWeb movement—or a streamlined, user-friendly version of it to come—succeed in redeeming the promise of social media? If we itemise the woes currently afflicting the major platforms, there’s a strong case to be made that the IndieWeb avoids them.”

Yet Another Novel I Will No Longer Write — “Elite panic is the phenomenon by which rich and/or privileged people imagine that in times of chaos all social constraints break down and everyone around them will try to rob, rape, and murder them. To some extent this reflects their own implicit belief that humanity is by nature grasping, avaricious, amoral, and cruel, and that their status depends on power and violence.”

The Hollow Politics of Minimalism — “Millburn and Nicodemus call themselves the minimalists, but they aren’t the definitive article; they’re part of a larger trend that has swept the United States over the past decade.”

The list of all the articles I’ve written can be found here. And the past three editions of Sunday Wisdom are here: 31, 30, and 29.

🤔 Worth Thinking About

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function

— Albert Bartlett

This has never been more true than in recent times when time and again policy makers have ignored the exponential growth of the virus. They kept on comparing it with car accidents.

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📭 My email address is hellocoffeeandjunk@gmail.com. I love talking to individuals and small businesses at any time, for any reason. So please feel free to drop me an email.

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